Honor was born in 1816 and was the fourth child of Peter Jacco and his wife Catherine Noell nee Kelynack. She grew up with two older brothers Peter and Benjamin, and a sister Jane in the fishing village of Newlyn in the parish of Paul; she was baptised in Paul Parish Church on 28 August 1816. Later brothers and sisters William, Charles Kelynack, Matilda and Richard were born between 1819 and 1830.

This was in the Regency of the future King George IV. Unlike him his wife Caroline was very popular in Cornwall and when she won her law case against her husband in 1820 the people of Newlyn lit tar barrels around Mount’s Bay and wore celebratory mottoes such as “Queen Caroline Forever” in their hats. George was crowned in 1821 – leaving his wife Caroline to hammer angrily but fruitlessly on the doors of Westminster Abbey during his coronation.

Fradgan, Street An Nowan

The lower area of what is now Newlyn in which Honor grew up was called Street An Nowan and was a settlement of about 300 people[1]. At the time the name Newlyn referred to the area of [modern] Newlyn situated on higher ground above the “small, but commodious pier, capable of containing vessels of one hundred tons burthen; but is chiefly employed by the numerous fishing boats belonging to the place, which exceeds four hundred in number”. There were 900 people living there in 1820[2].

During her childhood there were storms and hurricanes which tore into Mounts Bay damaging ships[3][4] and tearing up the seafront between Newlyn and Penzance, wet summers and shipwrecks.

In June 1841 she was living in the Fradgan of Street An Nowan, the type of lane area which doesn’t bother with street numbers on the early census records. She is likely to have been working as a servant at that point as she was seven months later when she married.

Paul Parish Church

Honor married Samuel Plomer [Plaumer] on 28 January 1842 at Paul Parish Church. He was a fisherman born in Mullion Cove who was a son of a labourer.

In spring 1844 they became parents with the arrival of their daughter Catherine, who was baptised at the same church on 18 December 1844. Elizabeth Mary was born in summer 1848 and baptised that November. In March 1851 the family were living in the Fradgan still and their next daughter Jane was born c November 1853 and baptised on 17 March 1854.

In autumn of the following year her father Peter Jacco died, followed by her mother Catherine towards the end of 1856.

The fourth and final daughter, Agnes, was born in 1857 and baptised on 26 August of that year, again in Paul Church. In April 1861 the family was living at 9 Fradgan in Street An Nowan.

However their was tragedy for the family w hen their oldest daughter Catherine, who was only 24, died in August 1868, and was buried up at Paul on 2 September.

By April 1871 the family were living in Chapel Street, Street An Nowan, Samuel still fishing. They were living next to Honor’s older brother Benjamin and his wife Priscilla and their family, including their daughter Catherine, son-in-law James Rowe and grandson Benjamin – all of whom are my ancestors. It was a small community. Their three daughters Elizabeth Mary, Jane and Agnes were all working as net makers. Cruelly at the end of that year Honor and Samuel’s second daughter Elizabeth Mary, aged 23, died three years after her sister Catherine, and was buried on 27 December 1871 in Paul.

Their two remaining daughters, however, both married and had families.

Honor and Samuel’s third daughter Jane married a mason’s son from Newlyn called Edward Collins in early 1875. However the couple moved away to Lancashire where in April 1881 Edward was working as an Assistant Marine Superintendent from their home in Kirkdale. Kirkdale “lies on the river Merrsey, the Leeds and Liverpool canal, the Liverpool and Southport railway, and the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway”[5].

Together they had seven children, of whom four died young. Jane was born in 1878, Edward in spring 1880, Florence Evelene in late 1890 and Ethel in late 1892. Ethel was working as a clerk typist in April 1911 and married Frederick Wylie in 1916.

Honor and Samuel’s youngest daughter Agnes married Richard Carne, also from Newlyn, in early 1879. He was a ropemaker in the Royal Navy, whose records describe him as 5’4” tall, with dark brown hair and dark blue eyes and of sallow complexion. Richard worked on various ships between 1875 and 1891, several times on the Indus but also the Triumph, the Ganges, the Nankin, the Newcastle, the Valiant and the Bellarophon, with his conduct being consistently described as either Very Good or Exemplary.

Agnes and Richard’s first child, son Samuel Plomer Carne, was born in Newlyn some point in late 1879 or early 1880, but by April 1881 the family were living in Devonport, [Plymouth] Devon, where their daughter Agnes Gertrude had been born ten years after her brother in late 1889/early 1890. However they must have moved soon after that as on 28 March 1890 Agnes and Richard baptised Agnes Gertrude in Mylor [near Falmouth] in Cornwall where at one time there had been a small RN Dockyard[6].

The following April, 1891, Richard was working on the Ganges in Falmouth Harbour and the family were living in Mylor Bridge. The 1911 census recorded Agnes and Richard as having had 3 children born alive, 2 still alive and one died. So I wonder if they’d had a child in the mid-1880s, given the large gap between the birth of Samuel and of Agnes Gertrude.

By March 1901 Richard had retired from the Navy and the family were living in Tolcarne, by Newlyn, with him a Naval Pensioner and son Samuel a carpenter.

In 1902 Richard and Agnes’ son Samuel married Eliza Ethel Jenkin, a Penzance girl. The young couple had a son Ernest in 1903 and a daughter Gerturde Kathleen in 1904 in Penzance but by 1911 they had had and lost two further children.

In 1915 Richard, aged 61, was serving in the Navy again in the First World War, first on the Dreel Castle then the Valid 1 until it was decommissioned in 1916. After the war he returned to being a Naval Pensioner until he died three years later on 30 August at home in Tolcarne. Agnes lived on until 1935 when she died at the age of 78. Their son Samuel had served in the First World War in the Labour Corps.

Sheffield Road Cemetery, Paul

Honor and Samuel lived on in Chapel Street, Newlyn after their daughters had left the area. In 1891 Samuel was marked as a retired fisherman. Honor died on 13 March 1893 and was buried on 17 March in Paul’s Sheffield Road Cemetery. Samuel died two years later and was buried on 19 August 1895.

Jane Jacca [Jaco, Jacka] was the third child and first daughter of Newlyn fisherman Peter Jacco and his wife Catherine Noall Kelynack’s eight children. Baptised on 15 August 1813 in Paul Parish Church, she may have assumed as a girl that her future husband would be a fisherman like her father, brothers and a future brother-in-law.

However it was a miner she settled down with. Martin Casley and his family lived and worked in St Just in Penwith, a west-coast Cornish town approx. 7 miles west from Newlyn with the legend that it was named after the 6th century saint Justus[1] , although there was reported evidence of ancient peoples and mining[2].

‘The land is bleak, and to a great extent barren. The rocks are chiefly granite and slate; but they include rich lodes of tin and copper, – contain iron, bismuth, hornblende, tale, garnet, opal, and many other minerals’[3]

St Just is the most westerly town in mainland Britain and one of the oldest mining parishes in Cornwall, until the collapse of the industry at the end of the 19th century saw miners scattering around Britain and overseas.[4]

They married on 12 January 1834 and moved to St Just where Martin, the first of their nine children, was born later that year and baptised in St Just Parish Church on 17 December. He was followed by Richard who was baptised on 19 June 1836. Their third son, named Peter after Jane’s father, was born at the end of 1837 but died in infancy and was buried on 24 September 1839.

Jane would already have been pregnant with her fourth child at that time, and he was baptised Peter Jaco Casley in May 1840. They were living on Green Lane, in the south part of St Just called Carrallack near Carn Bosavern, the area to which their children were to live in or return to for decades.

Their next child and only daughter Mary Jane was born c1842, next son George was baptised on 26 March 1844, William was born c 1847 and Thomas was born c 1849. By 1851 the family was living in Bosavern in St Just and had seven children at home. Oldest son Martin was working as a 16-year-old tapper miner and so was his 13-year-old brother Richard; the younger children were all at school. Jane and Martin’s final known and ninth child John was born c 1852.

In 1856 Jane’s fisherman father Peter died from an effusion of the brain, and the following year her mother Catherine also died.

In June 1860 their second son, Richard (a tin tapper) and his bride [and possibly cousin] Jane Casley called banns in St Just Parish Church. They married there on 4 July 1860.

In 1861 Jane and Martin were still living in Bosavern [Row] but it may be that their son Peter emigrated that year, as in April 1861 the census finds him lodging in Liverpool with [possible] cousin James Casley, and three other men, John Curnow, Arcles Warren and Able Stephens, all marked as tin miners from St Just. Hints that he ended up in Canada have so far proved to be mis-transcriptions, maybe some day new records will be available and the gaps can be filled in.

In early 1867 their son Thomas died. He was just 18 and had been working as a tin worker since he was 12. He was buried in the Wesleyan Burial grounds; the first indication that the family may have converted to Wesleyan Methodism; there was a chapel in St Just which seated 2,000 people[5].

In April 1871 Jane and Martin were living again in Carrallack, St Just with Martin, Mary, George William and John home with them. However further tragedy struck the family in 1873 when eldest son Martin died, aged 38. He was buried on 31 August again in the Wesleyan Burial grounds.

Mary Jane married Thomas Stephens and they were living in Penzance in 1881, after having daughters Mary Jane (1874) and Elizabeth (c1876). Thomas was originally a miner, as was his father, but perhaps as a result in the slump in the mining industry had become a grocer. This seemed a bit implausible to me, when I first saw this suggested on Ancestry, but tracking them through to 1901 I find them living in Carrallack Terrace, and with that and other evidence I’m confident it’s ‘my’ Mary Jane.

By March 1878 youngest child John was away working in Lancashire as a miner. He married a Welsh woman called Catherine Williams in Pemberton, Lancashire, which has coal mines and stone quarries[6] which perhaps was where John was working. There they had their first child in 1878 before moving back to her home county of Glamorgan where John continued to work as a miner, and they had four more sons there.

In early 1877 they lost their fourth son when George died; he had initially worked as a shoe maker (1861) but by April 1871 had become a miner. He was still living in St Just, in Bosavern Terrace. He was buried on 9 February in the Wesleyan Methodist burial ground in St Just.

Jane died in October 1879 and was buried in St Just Wesleyan burial grounds on 25 October. Martin was living alone for the 3 April 1881 census. He died on 25 June 1885 and his executrix was his daughter Mary Ann.

By April 1891 grocer Thomas and Mary Jane Stephens [Jane and Martin’s daughter] were back in St Just, working in Lafrowda Terrace. By March 1901 Thomas was recorded as a retired grocer. They had their daughter Elizabeth living with them; she was by then married to Benjamin Angwin, a miner’s son. Also in the household was Thomas and Mary Jane’s grandson Benjamin Redbers Angwin who was 4 months old. By 1911 Elizabeth had had a daughter and another son, but her insurance salesman husband Benjamin Angwin died in October 1911; he was buried in the St Just Wesleyan burial ground.

I’d never seen the inside of a Methodist Chapel and it’s so much nicer than I expected. There is a story about a proposed closure/re-use of the Chapel here with photos, although on its St Just Methodist Chapel Facebook group it is still promoting its prayer session as of today, 29 January 2017.

Thanks to Denize Halliwell, Susan Carey and Stephanie Dawn Smith of the Ancestry UK Facebook group for checking some Canadian posts about Peter Casley for me.

Peter was born on 12 August 1807 in the Cornish fishing village of Newlyn, near Penzance, in the Regency period during the final years of George III’s reign. His parents were fisherman Peter Jacco and Catherine nee Kelynack. He was their first child and they baptised him on 26 February 1809 in Paul Church up on the hill above Newlyn.

Peter’s youngest years saw food shortages and were the times of the Napoleonic Wars; he was 7 when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. When he was 10 he may have witnessed this happen to another boy in Newlyn in July:

“On Tuesday last an unusual circumstance was witnessed by several hundreds of spectators. At Newlyn, near Penzance, a swarm of bees suddenly alighted on a boy’s head, and remained there for a considerable time. The boy, almost terrified to death, was required to smoke tobacco, to preserve him from being injured. In the meantime a hive was procured and held over his head for some time; when by degrees the bees all entered it, without inflicting the least injury on the boy.”[1]

At the age of 19, in 1825, Peter joined the merchant service as a seaman.

Maybe he was away at sea a lot, but Peter didn’t marry until he was 30 in April 1838, marrying 23-year-old Newlyn girl Jane Harvey who had been working as a servant. They married in Paul Church.

By the June 1841 census they had two sons, Peter, baptised on 23 September 1838, and John, c December 1840. They were living in Navy Inn Street, in the high part of Newlyn above the South Pier [shown in header photo]. Daughter Jane followed, born c1844, son Charles c1847 and Edwin in spring 1850.

On 24 January 1851 Peter was awarded his Master’s Certificate for “26 years in the British Merchant Service in the Foreign Trade.”

He was away in March 1851 on the census night and Jane was home in Factory Row with their five children. They become parents again with the arrival of Henry who was baptised on 16 April 1854. Also in 1854 Peter’s father Peter died, with his mother Catherine dying the following year.

Peter and Jane were again recorded in Navy Inn Street in the April 1861 census. This time he was recorded as working as a fisherman.

In 1870, when Peter was 62, their son Peter, who was a fisherman, married a fisherman’s daughter called Alice Mann Wills. Peter and Jane became grandparents in 1872 with the arrival of Peter and Alice’s daughter Alice.

Daughter Jane married fisherman Thomas G Cattran in June 1876 and Charles, a fisherman, married fisherman’s daughter Ann Barnes in 1877, all in Paul Parish Church.

Upper and Lower Green Street, 2016

In 1881 Peter and Jane were living in Upper Green Street, still above the South Pier. Son Edwin married Mary Downing in 1882, a year which saw food shortages in Cornwall.

Peter died the following year, at the end of 1883. Jane lived on, still living in Upper Green Street in 1891, living with her widowed sister Margaret and Jane’s two unmarried sons, Henry and John. She died in late summer 1897 and was buried in Paul Parish on 6 September 1897.

On 20 June 1837 Queen Victoria became queen after the death of her uncle William IV. At that time shoemaker William and Alice Rowe were settled with a large family in Street-an-Nowan, Newlyn, Cornwall. You can read the earlier part of their story here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

That year their eldest son John, by then working as a mason, married Sarah Sampson in neighbouring Penzance; her father was a butcher with a shop and home on Market Jew Street. In 1839 William and Alice became grandparents when Sarah and John had their first of eight children, Elizabeth.

On 6 June 1841 the census recorded shoemaker William and Alice living in Street-an-Nowan. Grace and Alice were both at home and working as female servants; Patience (11) and Elizabeth (9-10) were still children. Youngest child James wasn’t with his parents that evening. I haven’t confirmed a location for eldest son John for that particular night but his family were living in neighbouring Penzance on Market Jew Street where his wife and daughter were living in her butcher father’s house. Maybe he was away looking for work as a mason.

Tolcarne Inn, Newlyn

In June 1841 their oldest daughter Mary Ann had been a servant in the Tolcarne Inn over the Combe; on 21 May 1843 she married a fisherman called Thomas Rowe (no relationship known) in Paul Church.

Pigot’s Directory 1841 reported about Newlyn that in addition to fishing pilchards and mackerel “A valuable lead mine is in the parish, as are several chalybeate springs. There are two annual fairs held here—on the first Tuesday in October and 8th November”.

Early in spring 1844 Alice became ill with Phithesis: ‘pulmonary tuberculosis or a similar progressive wasting disease’.

However there was happiness in summer 1844 when their daughter Alice Daniel Rowe married fisherman Bernard Victor in Trinity Wesleyan Chapel, Newlyn on 10 June. She moved to neighbouring Mousehole where Bernard lived and fished. Their oldest child, Gamaliel ‘Gift of God’ Victor was baptised on 24 November 1844 in Paul Church. Bernard had an interest in the Cornish language and spoke with local old people to record words for posterity as the language was dying out.

Mousehole Harbour

Around about this time (c1844) William’s eldest son John and his young family moved to Wales for him to find work as a mason.

On 9 March 1845 Alice, William’s wife of 33 years and mother of his 9 children, died in Newlyn aged 51. Their youngest son, James Daniel Rowe, was only 10 at that time.

In March 1851 William had his three daughters Grace, Patience and Elizabeth living with him in Foundry Lane, Street-an-Nowan. Grace had become a straw bonnet maker, so perhaps she’d enjoyed working with her father as a girl and/or preferred making bonnets to being a female servant as she had been ten years before. Patience and Elizabeth were still living at home but with no profession recorded. Youngest son James was working on the Brittania fishing boat in neighbouring Mousehole.

That was the year of the Great Exhibition at Chrystal Palace London. A local woman, 84-year-old Mary Kelynack of Tolcarne, became famous nationally by walking nearly 300 miles to London to see the Exhibition, carrying a basket on her head. There she met the Lord Mayor and took tea – preferring that to wine – with the Lady Mayoress; she was presented with a sovereign. She was also presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Paul Church

Two years later William’s daughter Patience Daniel Rowe married mariner Thomas Tonkin Tremethick on 23 January 1853 in Paul Church; William’s first Tremethick grand-child Joe was born on 8 December 1853.

A curious midsummer custom went on in Mount’s Bay in June[1]. On 23 and 28 June tar barrels were lit and flaming torches swung in the streets. Bonfires were lit in Marazion, the Mount, Newlyn and Mousehole so the Bay “glows with a girdle of flame”. Young people played ‘Thread-the-needle’ along the streets: “Lads and lasses join hands, and run furiously through the streets, vociferating “An eye – an eye – an eye!” at length they suddenly stop, and the two last of the string, elevating their clasped hands, form an eye to this enormous needed, through which the thread of populace runs, and thus they continue to repeat the game until weariness dissolves the union.” Unsurprisingly the following day was a lot quieter, with people idling with music on the water (called ‘having a pen’orth of sea’).”

Boase Street, Newlyn, with mid-path drain

Newlyn at the time may have been scenic but smelt rather overwhelming[2]: “They are a colony of fisherman, with narrow paved lanes, glistening with pilchard scales in the season – with external staircases and picturesque interiors, of which glimpses are obtained through an open doorway or window.” However they “may call to mind the semi-barbarous habitations of some foreign countries – such as Spain. The perfume of garlic fills the air, and other odours not so sweet hasten the step of the traveller. These arise from little enclosures which front every cottage door. They are neatly bordered with stones or shells, and consist – not of a flower-bed, but of a dunghill, formed chiefly of the refuse of fish, in which the process of decay is hastened by the activity of many unhappy-looking fowls and pigs.”

On 7 October 1859 William’s youngest son James Daniel married Catherine Jaco. She was a Newlyn girl and the daughter of Master Mariner Benjamin Jaco. They had the first of their 8 children in January 1860, Benjamin Jaco Rowe [my ancestor].

A few weeks later William became a great-grandfather when John’s oldest daughter Elizabeth had a daughter out of wedlock in Wales – she and the baby’s father Phillip Tripp later married in Madron on 20 March 1862.

Looking up Foundry Lane

On 2 April 1861 William, still working as a shoemaker, was living at 2 Foundry Lane, in the Street-an-Nowan area of what is now Newlyn. His dressmaker daughter Grace was still living at home with him. Another daughter, Patience D Tremethick, was living next door at number 3 with her merchant mariner husband Thomas and their five young children; the oldest being 7 and the youngest just 10 months old.

Oldest son John had been widowed in the early 1860s and he remarried on 17 December 1865 in Madron; his wife was a widow called Cecilia Paynter Stevens who had children of her own and lived for a few years in New Zealand. Around 1866 John’s daughter Elizabeth and her husband Philip Tripp moved away; she died, he put two youngest boys in an orphanage where they lived for many years until the family tracked down the surviving son.

In 18 Sep 1867 his grand-daughter Mary Wright Victor [Alice and Bernard’s oldest daughter] married naval carpenter Edward Albert Kelynack in Newlyn St Peter. Mary stayed in Newlyn for the first years of her marriage while Edward was away at sea, living with her aunt, bonnet-maker Grace Daniel Rowe, William’s second daughter.

William saw his grandson Joe Tremethick start with the West Cornwall Railway in Penzance in 1868; Joe ended up working his way round England with the Great Western Railway.

Paul Cemetery

William died on 15 December 1869 of old age and exhaustion. His caring eldest child Mary Ann Rowe was present at his death and she registered his death the following day.[3] He was recorded as 81, although on balance of the evidence of baptisms and the 1841 census he was probably only 76. William was buried on 19 December in Paul Cemetery up above Newlyn.

William and Alice’s son and fourth child James was baptised on 16 June 1822 but died young. Their daughter Alice was baptised on 31 October 1824 and sixth child Thomas was baptised 19 August 1827. Next came Patience Daniel who was baptised on 15 March 1830, all were baptised in Paul Church.

Times continued to be hard for the ordinary people; the summer of 1823 was a wet one with the rain delaying the gathering in of hay and beating down corn so it would not ripen. However signs were good for the pilchard harvest.

In April 1827 there was the ‘melancholy circumstance’ when ‘A very fine and fast-sailing-fishing-smack, named the Blucher… manned by six men and a boy’ left Newlyn for Bristol but the weather worsened; they were heading for Padstow but the smack and her crew were lost when the boat ran onto the Dunbar Sands and “Five widows and eighteen children are left to lament the disastrous event that has deprived them of their natural protectors; the unfortunate deceased were all men of excellent character”.[1]

On Monday 24 September 1827 there was local excitement when a wrestling championship was held in a field on the Newlyn-Penzance road with two champion wrestlers “Mr [John] Polkinghorne, the champion of England, and Mr Richard Saundry, in his day the champion of the west, were the well-chosen umpires.”

The very enthusiastic Morning Chronicle reporter wrote that “At twelve o’clock the sight was very imposing – some thousands of the most athletic young men that the world can produce (each of whom would have honoured Leonidas at the Straits of Thermopylae, Bonaparte in passing the Bridge of Lodi, or even Wellington himself in the battle of Waterloo), seated or standing in perfect silence and order, and with intense interest, to witness and participate in a sport for which their ancestors were so justly renowned. It was impossible for any man, deserving that name, to behold the spectacle of so many manly youths assembled on such an occasion, without emotions of admiration and delight, and without congratulating himself as belonging to the species. It was a sight and occasion, as connected with the maintenance of strength, courage and agility, among the people, worthy the countenance, presence, encouragement, and support of Majesty itself.”[2]

Another heavy storm in Mounts Bay was reported in November 1828 and the Dove broke its moorings and made for Newlyn: “A boat was launched at Newlyn, but only three persons could be found to venture out; these were Mr Pearce, the agent for Lloyd’s at Penzance; Lieut. Hearle of the Preventive Service at Mousehole, and Mr Nicholas, carpenter of the Dove, who was on shore on duty. This being the case, the boat could not be got off, and the spectators hastened to the beach, where the crew of the Dove strove to get a line on shore but were unable to do so, in consequence of the offset of the waves.

“The fisherman brought the ropes of their nets, and after great efforts, a rope was thrown on board by Mr Pearce, at the eminent risk of his life. The connexion once secured, other ropes were got from the vessel to the shore, and in about half an hour the whole of the crew were rescued from their perilous situation. Lieut. Stocker was the last person who left the vessel. As it was supposed that one of the crew was missing, Mr Pearce volunteered to go on board to see for him, which hazardous enterprize he effected, having been twice washed from the gunwhale by the tremendous sea that was running. No person being visible, he returned, and afterwards it was ascertained that all the crew were safe.”[3]

On 26 Jun 1830, in his gilded world, George IV died and his brother became William IV.

Meanwhile back in Newlyn, in December 1830, another storm pounded Newlyn and the Sherborne Mercury reported that “Gwavas Quay, the road of communication between Street-on-Nowan [SIC] and Newlyn Town [the two parts of what’s now Newlyn] is quite beaten down, and the road from Penzance to Tolcarne has been overflowed in such a manner as to be rendered totally impassable.”[4]

William and Alice’s daughter Elizabeth was baptised on 5 December 1832 and their ninth and final child, my ancestor James Daniel Rowe, was baptised on 30 March 1835 in Paul Church.

Shoemaker William Rowe of Street-an-Nowan [Newlyn], Cornwall, married Alice Daniel, a blacksmith’s daughter from neighbouring Sancreed parish, on Saturday 17 October 1812 in Paul Parish Church up above Newlyn. See Part 1 of his story here.

Alice was expecting the first of their nine known children, Mary Ann Rowe. They baptised Mary Ann on Sunday 17 January 1813 in Paul Church, and got on with settling in to life as a young family.

Sancreed Church exterior

On 19 January 1817 a hurricane raged which destroyed some of the foundation stones of neighbouring Penzance’s pier and injured much of its dry dock. ‘It being a spring tide the water rose an unusual height; the green between Penzance and Newlyn was torn up, and the soil in several places washed away’ and ‘at Newlyn and Mousehole on the west, and at Marazion on the east, the effects were dreadfully felt’[1] [Some things do not change; the green between Penzance and Newlyn was torn up as recently as February 2014.] ‘The sea rose mountains high and impelled by the wind, went up much further on land than ever remembered. The may-pole at Marazion, which had, for many years, braved the fury of the storm, was washed away, with the cliff whereon it stood. The back premises of the Commercial Inn were through down, and a fine cow carried out to sea.’

Newlyn, Old Harbour, low tide

‘The greatest sufferers are the poor fisherman of Newlyn and Mousehole; the boats which were hauled up beyond high water mark, being dashed to pieces. Many of the boats for the mackerel and ling fishery were fitted up: the loss to the poor fisherman will be almost irreparable, as the season will soon commence and they cannot provide new boats. At Street-Nowan [SIC] near Newlyn, many houses have been washed down.’[2] Street-an-Nowan, the lower part of Newlyn, is likely to have been the area in which William, Alice and baby Mary lived so they must have been terrified.

In 1811 Prince George had become Prince Regent and I’ve found a couple of intriguing references to his domestic situation and the reaction of the people of Newlyn; they seem to have favoured his wife, the colourful and popular Caroline of Brunswick.

On 28 Jan 1817 the Prince Regent was on his way to open Parliament when there was an assassination attempt.[3] On 2 August 1817 the Royal Cornwall Gazette published a letter to him with a long list of names of men across the area, swearing loyalty to him and repeating “assurances of our loyal and unalterable Attachment; and to express our Indignation at, and Abhorrence of, the late treasonable Attack on the Sacred Person of your Royal Highness…..”

However William and Alice’s would have been busy following the birth of their second child: their first son John Rowe was born in Newlyn and baptised 24 August 1817 in Paul Church.

On Tuesday 7 July there was a shocking event in Newlyn reported widely and “witnessed by several hundreds of spectators. At Newlyn, near Penzance, a swarm of bees suddenly alighted on a boy’s head, and remained there for a considerable time. The boy, almost terrified to death, was required to smoke tobacco, to preserve him from being injured. In the mean time a hive was procured and held over his head for some time; when by degrees the bees all entered it, without inflicting the least injury on the boy.”

Later that year, in November 1817, there was mourning in the country when Princess Charlotte, popular only child of the Prince Regent and Princess Caroline died in labour, giving birth to a stillborn son.

William and Alice’s second daughter, Grace Daniel Rowe, was born on Tuesday 7 December 1819 in Newlyn. She was the only family member to be baptised a Wesleyan Methodist; the baptism took place on 7 January 1821. This was the first time William’s trade was recorded: he was a shoemaker.

At that time the road from Penzance to Newlyn, hurricanes permitting, “was over a level green about a mile in length, passing through the village of Street-an-Nowan, which contains about 300 inhabitants; in it there is a respectable meeting-house belonging to the Methodists, where divine service is regularly performed; there is also in this village a Sunday School for poor children.”[4]

In November 1820 [now] Queen Caroline was found innocent of charges of infidelity brought against her by her husband, [now] King George IV and Newlyn erupted in joy: “Last night’s mail having announced the joyful tidings of the Queen’s victory over her vile accusers, this morning was ushered in by the display of flags of almost every description at the mast heads of the different vessels in this port, and on poles in many parts of the town and the neighbouring villages of Newlyn and Mousehole. Subscriptions have been entered into for defraying the expenses of bonfires, tar barrels, &c and at this moment there may be seen on the opposite hill, over Newlyn, a quantity of tar barrels, reflecting their vivid flames in the mirror of water below, whilst on the rocks, near the shore, bonfires innumerable blaze up and enliven the scene.
“Long live Queen Caroline,” – “Queen Caroline for ever,” – may be seen on almost every hat, and in every varied form and colour, whilst parties, preceded by music, parade the streets, and rend the air by their acclamations of “Long live Queen Caroline.” A requisition has been made to the Mayor, to illuminate the town on Wednesday night, and several large dinner parties have already formed at the hotel, and the respectable Inns, to celebrate the glorious 10th of November, in a manner that may not be unworthy the great victory that day obtained by her most gracious Majesty Queen Caroline.”[5]
Queen Caroline died in August following year; she had been denied entry to Westminster Abbey for the Coronation held the month before on 19 July 1821.

William Rowe was born c1793 in Newlyn, Paul Parish, in the West Penwith area of Cornwall. He was the second son of labourer James Rowe and his wife Patience (nee Rodda).[1] William was baptised aged 2-3 on 29 Mar 1795 in Paul Parish Church[2]. His was the first generation to be born in Paul Parish; his parents were from St Buryan parish.

I’ve found two brothers and a sister for William: James was baptised on 3 October 1790 and Ann was baptised on 23 September 1792. However she died in infancy and was buried on 8 June 1793. Younger brother Thomas Rodda Rowe was baptised on 13 January 1802, all in Paul Parish Church.

William’s childhood years were those of the French Revolution, of war with France and the Regency. During those wars a battery was located on the road between Newlyn and Mousehole “forming a great security to the Bay, from enemy’s ships, or privateers, should any of them be induced to visit any part of it. Adjoining to this battery stands a furnace for the purpose of making shot red hot. During the war, this battery was governed by a small party of the royal artillery.”[3]

Times were hard in West Penwith and when he was about 7 in 1801 the family would have been hungry as a result of the high price of wheat. It was reported in the London Courier and Evening Gazette on 20 April 1801 that in St Austell, 40 miles away, the tinners had tried forcing farmers to sell it at an affordable price by threatening to put nooses round farmers’ necks until they signed a document promising to sell it at an affordable rate; but they were taken into custody at St Mawes. In Helston the Volunteer Cavalry found it hard to keep order until most of the local farmers came forward and promised to sell wheat the following Saturday at ‘two guineas, and barley at one guinea the bushel’.

In Penzance two Newlyn men petitioned the Mayor that he reduce the prices in Newlyn; but when he chose not to listen they ‘assembled on their own authority’. The constables and military were called out and further ‘mischief was prevented’ but the disturbances kept many country people away from selling their goods at the markets.[4]

In 1806 there was a call for designs for a bridge across the small river Coombe in Newlyn which divided the Paul and Madron parishes. The bridge was to ‘to contain in length about seventy feet and in breadth about eighteen feet ’. Designs were due to be considered at the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace in January 1807 with the target for completion 6 October 1807.

In October 1809 there was a huge gale, and the ‘L’Eole, a French prize to the Surveillante and Medusa frigates, laden with salt, &c, arrived in the Mount’s Bay a few days ago, and being driven by the gale from Gwavas Lake, ran for Newlyn Pier, but got upon the rocks, where she now lies’ and it was doubtful she could be rescued as the gale still continued.

Paul Parish Church

In August 1812 a good crop of potatoes, was reported, which coupled with a good haul of pilchards and hake, ‘greatly relieved the poor in Cornwall from the pressure occasioned by the high price of corn’.[5]

So it would have been on a slightly fuller stomach that William married Alice Daniel, a blacksmith’s daughter from neighbouring Sancreed parish, on Saturday 17 October 1812 in Paul Parish Church up above Newlyn.

[1] A DOB for William of c1788 DOB is indicated by his death certificate and the 1851 & 1861 censuses. However even though they match, I believe that William was the third child and not the first, given his baptism year 1795 and the fact he was stated on the 1841 census as being 50. Age at marriage isn’t indicated in the record.